Phil: Dropping into my local library, I spotted an attractive book in the new items section. I’m not sure why it appealed – although a local fight to save a lido, or perhaps the Nolan’s requests for lido’s she could visit during last summer’s heatwave might have had something to do with it.

The story has two main strands;

Rosemary has lived in Brixton all her life, but everything she knows is changing. Only the local lido, where she swims every day, remains a constant reminder of the past and her beloved husband George.

Kate has just moved and feels adrift in a city that is too big for her. She’s on the bottom rung of her career as a local journalist and is determined to make something of it.

When the lido is threatened with closure, Rosemary rallies the local community and comes into contact with Kate, who champions their cause in the local press. Along the way, Kate grows in confidence and starts to find her feet in the local area.

There’s a third strand as we follow Rosemary and her husband in flashback, the lido playing an important part in bringing them together.

Said like this it all sounds a bit run of the mill, but the book sweeps you along to the bitter-sweet conclusion.

What I don’t understand is why I enjoyed it so much. The front cover describes it as “Joyous and uplifting” which it certainly is.

It’s not just me either. A quick renewal and for the first time ever I lent it to Candice and she quickly read and enjoyed it too. Then my mum read it and loved it.

This is not great literature. To be honest, you can probably work out the bare bones of the plot pretty early on but it really doesn’t matter. What it is is the sort of book people enjoy. Read on a sunlounger it would be perfect, but it’s just as good on a chilly winters day in front of the fire. Just the sort of book we have aspired to write.

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Phil: We’ve mentioned in the past that one of the trickiest stages in getting a book out there is working out how to pitch it. We know what’s on the pages and reducing this down so it can be explained in the duration of an elevator journey has always proved impossible.

We’re not alone. Nearly everyone who has completed a novel feels the same way. Which bits do you leave out?

Luckily, Writing West Midlands runs a day-long course to help. We both paid up and went along – two heads are better than one after all.

The 14 attendees first had to talk to someone else for two minutes about themselves. Not easy, but I managed it without boring my victim to death. Then we had to do it again. At this stage, the rules said no mentioning your writing.

Then we moved on to proper pitching. Pair up (Candice and I were deliberately and sensibly kept in separate groups) and explain your novel in 2 minutes. Repeat another 3 times to different people.

The repetition is important. Each time you find yourself modifying your pitch to pack more in, or to keep it under the time limit. Doing this several times in quick succession sharpens you up.

After lunch and a pep talk from the tutor, we were back at it again. This time there were another 7 attempts.

I felt I was getting better at this each time. My best effort was 1:53 and that seemed to be pretty good. I’d managed to get the start of the pitch down pretty tightly I thought and as I went around the room, the second half where I tried to include more details of our characters exploits was coming together.

Finally, it was time to pitch to the room. Speaking to the entire group was more of a challenge to most and pitches I’d heard earlier got a bit less focussed when faced with a crowd and no time limit. One thing became apparent as we went through this process, most people were writing literary fiction, not our commercial stuff. I guess that’s no surprise, Arts (with a capital A) organisations like “serious” material. There doesn’t seem to be anyone supporting those who just want to write fun stuff. Maybe there should be.

My effort seemed OK to me, but then Candice had a go and dropped the listener straight into the middle of our first scene. I didn’t feel so clever after that…

It was interesting that our efforts were more performance than a straight pitch. We were selling the book rather than just trying to distil the contents into 350 words. That might be something to do with our backgrounds and past experiences, or just that we are a bit more flamboyant than most. It’s possibly down to the type of book we are selling too. I don’t feel the need to take anyone through the wringer on my pages. That’s not to say you shouldn’t, a couple of the books sounded really interesting but not a light read, it’s just not our style. The tutor also suggested that our book was very filmic in style – something others have said to us. Perhaps we should be pitching a screenplay, but where do you start with that?

Anyway, as far as our pitches go, do we have the right approach? Apparently not quite but we got some pointers at the end and a few things to go and think about, but that’s why you go along to these events.

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Candice: I seem to have read a few books about World War II recently. Not specifically by choice but its just the ones I have picked up.

The first was given to me by my ex-boss as a Christmas present. Its called ‘All the light we can not see’ and follows the story of two sides of the war. One is Marie-Laure, a blind girl who is displaced, with her father, from Paris to the coast at the start of the war. The other is Werner, an orphan living in Germany who has an uncanny ability with radios and mechanics.

The two stories run in parallel as Werner is spotted by the Nazis and taken off to a camp to be made into a perfect soldier, and Marie-Laure finds out why she and her father ran, as he has been entrusted with the safekeeping of a precious diamond from the Museum he works in.

The second is ‘Mr Rosenblum’s List’ and relates the story of Jack Rosenblum, German Jew who has traveled to the UK before the War and is desperately trying to find his place after the annihilation of most of his family and race at home, accompanied by the British nervousness around someone with a German accent.

In his pursuit of a perfect Britishness, Jack ups sticks from his London home and successful business and moves to Dorset to build a golf course, something that will make him an equal with his peers.

Two very different books you say, well yes, but undercut with the same dark story of the horrors of war. The first does not shy away from representing the way that your take away someone’s humanity by drilling them everyday, and how this can create a world that would think concentration camps are a good idea. Jack sees the other side as his wife particularly struggles to cope with the fact she will never see her family again, as they were unable to get visas. How hard must have that decision been, who can leave and who can stay.

Neither were books I would normally read but I enjoyed them both, even with the dark subject matter. Sometimes its good to step out of the comfort zone and read something other than the ‘sunlounger’ read. And also, never to forget what happened in that war, so it never happens again.

We’d picked the very first scene Candice wrote when we were still back at the quango. I’d suggested that we read mine too, but this was vetoed as being too dull. As it was, we were on stage talking about pole dancing and the joys of a busy bar full of rugby players when you are wearing a slip of a dress…

Before the event, and during the interval, we were chatting to some of the audience who seemed very interested in how we manage to write as a duo. It seems that this really fascinated people. We’ve explained that neither of us would have completed a book without the other, and even if we had, the result would be very different. I couldn’t put the correct fashion references in for a start!

Candice was full of cold, but we both enjoyed ourselves a lot. Maybe the sugar rush from the excellent cakes eaten before things kicked off helped, but I think it’s that we love appearing before an audience. I really envy authors who find themselves regularly invited to festivals where they get to talk about writing and stories.

For our part, we’d like to do that but also help people to get into writing. As we both said several times, we really enjoy the process, so why shouldn’t everyone share the pleasure?

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Candice: A few years ago Phil and I had the chance to speak at Stratford Literary Festival. To be honest I can’t believe it was 2016! Since then a lot of discussion has been had about marketing the book and getting the word out there, but let’s be honest we’ve not been that great at it. It’s one of our biggest downfalls, we just enjoy the writing too much. I have a plan for that – but that’s for another blog post.

But, we have found a new group to talk too. Phil had spotted a newish cafe in Leamington Spa, The Temperance. and we’ve had a few successful meets there, as well as Phil attending an event a few weeks ago we has sent us off on another route.

So this Thursday we are off to talk Book to a group of fellow enthusiasts at a Storytelling event. We have done this one other time before, down in London, and got a good response. One of the things about Phil and I is that we write like we talk, so the quips in the book are also the way we present, which has been independently verified as funny!

However, I’m more off the cuff and Phil is more formal, so I’m sat in front of a script that Phil has written. I have to say I hate scripts, I feel obliged to be word perfect which makes me more nervous than actually just riffing it. I think we’ve had powerpoint slides and cue cards before. So between the two of us this afternoon we are going to plan a talk that is funny and gets across why you should read the book, but set up in a way that we are both comfortable with. Looking at previous posts that might be harder than you think!

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Phil: I’ve an admission to make. When I resolved to read more earlier this year, I also resolved to do something that would make that easier.

I resolved to give up on books I wasn’t enjoying.

Yes, I know. Every book is the result of hundreds, nay thousands of hours work by an author. They have done their best and part of me says I ought to stick at it and see every book I open through from start to finish.

But, that’s not me any more.

No. If I’m not enjoying a book, it’s heading for the charity pile. I read for pleasure, not because “it is good for me”. I can’t see the point in struggling through a book, especially a book of fiction, if I’m not drawn back to it when I find odd moments free during the day.

I console myself with the thought that not every book suits every reader. The photo shows The Waiter by Matias Faldbakken. Initially, I quite enjoyed the first person perspective of a finicky character happily serving in the same hotel for years. He loves routine and rules and the slightly old-fashioned feel of the place. Then a beautiful woman appears as a guest of one of the regular customers and he falls apart. At this point, I gave up. He would have seen attractive people before, so why was he instantly serving the wrong food to people and collecting unordered drinks?

Reading reviews on-line, it seems I’m not alone. Others love the book and good luck to them.

On the same basis, I’ve just given up on Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome. I tried, I really did. This is a classic and it would have been nice to have ticked that box. Sadly, I found it insufferable. To me, it’s a book you find funny because you are TOLD it is funny. Others will doubtless disagree.

As for Gulliver’s Travels – I can only assume it became popular because there was literally nothing else to read.

After the post, the discussion continued. I finished the first draft of the scene I was working on thinking it had been suitably adjusted to take into account my friend’s suggestions.

Apparently not. Or at least she fired back a few more. To be honest, I could see where she was coming from. The feedback made me ponder some aspects and we bashed a few e-mails back and forth. The details aren’t yet sorted out, but we both feel that fundamentally, the scene does what we need at that point in the story.

This might not sound fun, but I feel it’s an important part of our writing.

If you work on your own, the first useful feedback you’ll get will be from an editor. They will challenge you on plot points and the way the story runs. Then it’s up to you to fix things.

We don’t have this. For a plotline to appear in the book, it gets beaten around a bit. Some sections get more of the thrashing than others but the important part is we challenge each other, make each other think AND help with those thoughts. “I’m not sure about THIS, but what if we did THAT.” is a common phrase. We both present problems and solutions. Eventually, even we can’t tell who wrote each scene, which is how it should be.

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Welcome

Our Blog documents the trials and tribulations of trying to get our first book published. It’s not been easy – everyone thinks they have a book in them and quite a lot of them think that book should be in Waterstones - but as you can see, we haven't just published one, we've just launched our second!

Obviously this would be pretty dry on its own so there will be an exciting backstory explaining how someone from marketing and a nerdy bloke from IT managed to write something funny. So funny in fact that they thought people might actually be willing to pay to read it.